


Eye Of The Beholder

by withtheworms



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Underfell, Eye Trauma, M/M, Underfell Grillby, Underfell Papyrus, Underfell Sans, fictional drug use, generally unhealthy relationships across the board, it's seriously not that bad i'd rather be safe than sorry, messed up sansby, slightly different brand of Underfell, weird eye stuff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-24
Updated: 2017-06-11
Packaged: 2018-07-26 13:24:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 9,177
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7575652
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/withtheworms/pseuds/withtheworms
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's Underfell, but Sans' powers are a little bit different.  He's got multiple eyes inside his eyes and he's starting to realize that the """unique perspective""" they give him is something he's going to have to deal with.</p><p>Intended as a one-shot but who knows what the future has in store. (edit: ok it's not a one-shot anymore haha welcome back to this bad idea)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is a different take on Underfell that we've been working on just for funsies. At its core it's still _basically_ Underfell, but the details are different enough that your mileage may vary.
> 
> note: [this is what we mean by eyes-inside-his-eyes](http://withtheworms.tumblr.com/post/147554312155/what-if-underfell-sans-had-multiple-eyes-in-his) (harmless drawing, no real eyes involved)

Sans woke up… and it was a bad time.

A muffled groan escaped him as he rolled over on the lumpy rectangle of stained, sagging mattress that served as his bed, opening his right eye a sliver to assess his situation.  His head was pounding and every joint ached.  He’d thrown up or had some sort of nosebleed in his sleep, and as a result was laying in a puddle of something red and tacky– either blood or congealed magic residue, at this angle it was impossible to tell.

He sat up, conjuring his tongue and tentatively exploring the inside of his mouth as he cradled a hand to the side of his skull and tried to get a handle on the pounding inside of it that occupied the space where his brain should have been.  Tasting nothing like vomit or magic, with all teeth accounted for, he decided it had to have been a nosebleed (unpleasant, but not all that out of the ordinary) and sluggishly forced himself to stand.  

It took a moment.  Halfway to his feet his vision split in half and the room seemed to pitch wildly on its side, but he managed to wince and control it, dragging his shoulder against the wall as he stumbled out of his bedroom and made it the short distance to the washroom he shared with his brother.  

Clutching the edge of the sink he steadied himself, still fighting against the ache inside his skull, before he raised his eyes and looked at his reflection in the scratched mirror.

… So it hadn’t been a nosebleed, then.

“… Huh.”

Tentatively he raised his hand, phalanges touching at the residue that had dried around his left eye socket.  His eye had evidently expelled a lot of magic while he slept, and the weird, viscous liquid-- all too much like blood-- had left a dark stain behind that covered almost the entire left side of his skull.

He prodded at his face, gently touching the edge of his socket before he conjured his left iris; a fat ring of red flaring around a small, sharp pupil, so unlike the speck of harsh white light that made up his right eye.  He waited, scratching some of the dried bloody residue off his cheek as a second, and then a third red iris swam up out of the darkness of his eye socket, drifting lazily into formation next to the first and largest of the group.

“So the gang’s all here, then."

That was a relief, at least.

He winked his right eye, then his left, and, having found everything seemingly in place, he twisted one of the the sink’s faucets, collecting some magic to form a solid palm so he could pool a bit of water in his hands and begin scrubbing the dried-on magic off his face.  

It took him a minute, distracted as he was by scrubbing, to notice the growing static fuzzing the edge of his vision.  It started slow but built up quickly, so that too late for him to take any action it was overwhelming, his vision splitting into sharp-edge fractures that glitched in erratic sideways-shifting patterns, and then all at once he was-

-standing in his washroom, his head aching, looking at a reflection of himself in the mirror.

Or, rather….

A reflection of a _different_ self.  

The skeleton looking back at him in the mirror had all the right planes and lines, he knew it was _him_ – was Sans, but… his features were so much softer, his shoulders slumped in a relaxed slouch inside an oversized blue hoodie, and his smile lazy as he brushed his teeth.  

There was nothing brittle or tense about him, and Sans could almost enjoy the mis-matched reflection– until his vision started splitting again, large fissures running lengthwise across his line of sight, twitching in widening spasms until-

-Another Sans.  Another reflection, still not his own.  This one bare-chested, soul glowing dim inside his lattice of ribs, but with arms crossed, head down and folded deep into himself.

Sans squinted, forcing his eyes to focus as his reflection’s shoulders shuddered and he realize he was crying, and the grief was-

_-dead, all dead.  The gentle stranger’s voice behind the door, dead.  The little froggits, dead.  Every whimsum, every moldsmal.  Shyren.  Shyren’s dedicated agent– he couldn’t remember their name, did they have a name? They were dead and he didn’t know if he knew their name.  Undyne.  Oh my god.  Undyne was dead.  And… he couldn’t even form it in his mind, couldn’t make himself fathom it.  Papyrus…_

The fist of his mismatched reflection shot out, sparking with blue magic as it connected with the mirror, shattering it on contact, and Sans _felt_ it, felt the glass breaking, felt the shards dig into his knuckles, felt his breath hitch in his throat as he was wracked by another sob and-

-his vision tilted, shifted, blurring into long, melting lines that felt like he was being swept along at a great speed, and then all at once it snapped back into focus.  He was looking at his own reflection of his own skull, his own mismatched eyes, his own left socket oozing something thick and red-– the same mid-way between blood and magic substance he’d woken up in a puddle of.  

He was breathing heavy and he was sweating, clawed fingertips scraping at the chipped porcelain edge of the sink as he struggled to make sense of what he’d just experienced.  

The brief flashes, the glimpses into other timelines, looking out through the eyes of other Sanses… none of that was new.  He’d been observing his other selves across fractured, often incomprehensible, portions of timelines for as long as he could remember.  Benign, momentary windows into usually better (sometimes worse) realities.  

But this was the first time he’d _felt_ …

Absently he wiped beneath his eye with the back of his hand, swallowing hard and trying to focus as his irises split into four, then five, then reformed into three stable eye-lights.  

Whatever this was… it was getting worse.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Haha, we're back? Sort of. More of this "Underfell but different and worse" concept. Sans has multiple eyes in his eyes that he uses to see other timelines. Grillby's in this, now (we call him Brimsby).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay so actually this is very old, but i have a completionist itch and I want it all in one place. Vapetale....

The door leading into The Urn and Hound stuck, and Sans had to put his shoulder against it and push hard to force it open.   It groaned on its hinges as if reluctant to admit him, and a few eyes turned in his direction as he stood in the doorway, stamping slush off his shoes and shaking out the hood of his heavy jacket before he hunched back in on himself and skulked towards the bar.  

It wasn’t that he was unwelcome, he spent a good share of most of his days there, it’s just that his brother’s ongoing standoff with the pub’s owner meant that Sans’ frequent patronage meant… well,  _ something _ .  Honestly, the politics of it exhausted him, and unlike his brother, Sans didn’t care who was trafficking what and making back-alley deals with whom, just as long as he could get a drink in an out-of-the-way corner and be left the fuck alone.

The pub was shadowed with a thick haze and stank of sulfur and yet, somehow, it still felt strangely elegant.  Sans liked it; ironically it felt more like a cave than the one Snowdin was located in-- albeit a cave someone had invested a lot of time, effort, and  _ money _ into making look and feel opulent and intimidating.  

Like a lair, but with cocktail hour.  

The atmosphere was all an extension of the bar’s owner and his... unique personality.  A monster with no shame when it came to displaying what he had (though he somehow managed to contain himself when it came to how he got most of it).  

“Jack and Cola,” Sans said gruffly as he pulled himself up onto one of the tall stools, leaning heavily against the dark lacquered bar. “Actually, forget the cola.”

The figure behind the bar shifted, eyes narrowing and a thin smile breaking out across an otherwise featureless face made of indigo flames. 

“Surprised to see you here so early, Sans.  Rough day at the office?” 

There was a frustrating lack of empathy in his tone and Sans was seriously not in the mood for his attitude right now, but that itch- the longing for something to steady his nerves and maybe, just maybe, numb out a few of the timelines fuzzing in and out of focus in the corner of his vision, like bad reception on a television, overpowered his frustration.

“Fuck you, Brimsby,” he spat, propping his elbow against the bar and gently cupping his hand over his left eye.  He could feel his irises splitting and reforming inside his socket, three sights branching into four, five... a painful six, before they melded back together, allowing him to focus solely on his timeline, and the man who stood leering at him from behind the bar. 

“Somethin’ on my face?” his irritation caused his magic to bristle out, prickling along his extremities like a live-wire, just itching to summon an array of sharp-edged bone attacks. “I asked for a drink.”

Brimsby arched an eyebrow that wasn’t  _ really _ there and quietly produced a glass from behind the bar, setting it in front of Sans and turning to pull a bottle off the shelf behind him.

“Did Papyrus do that?” he asked, his tone conversational as he poured Sans his drink, looking pointedly at his left eye socket, which the skeleton realized too late was still stained from his magic overflow from earlier.

“S’none of your fucking business who did it,” Sans muttered, continuing to try and hide his eye with his hand, flinching sharply as indigo flames reached out and pried back his blunt claws, revealing the mess staining half his face.

“Not a bad look on you,” the bartender remarked, almost clinically, holding Sans’ jaw and turning his head to inspect him, earning an irritated growl from the skeleton. “He needs something to better occupy his time with, though, if  _ this _ is what he’s spending his days doing.”

Brimsby’s flaming fingertips trailed down the side of San’s skull, and against his better judgement Sans found himself leaning into the touch, a hiss escaping him as hot embers wormed their way between the vertebrae of his neck.  It was a deliberate ploy, and predictable, and some part of Sans knew better, but whatever Brimsby was doing invariably worked, and despite himself he felt the words leave him- far easier than they should have. 

“Papyrus didn’t do it.  He‘s too busy with his new assignment from Undyne to bother with me.  He doesn’t give a fuck.” 

“...What assignment is that?” 

He’d tried to hide it, but Brimsby’s obvious interest snapped Sans out of whatever trance he’d been in.  He cracked an eye open and grinned lazily at the bartender, his phalanges threading through the fire working its way down his neck as he nuzzled into his touch. 

“Y’know, if you like my brother so much, maybe you should try running your flames over  _ his _ bones for a change.”

Brimsby’s eyes narrowed and he retracted his hand immediately, standing up straight and busying himself adjusting one of the thick leather cuffs wrapped around his wrist, able to flawlessly redirect his attention in such a way that even Sans wasn’t quite sure if he’d called him out or not. 

“I have other things to do, Sans.  I don’t need you wasting my time with this.” 

Sans huffed, but couldn’t help but shrink under the admonishment

“So get on with it then,” he muttered, but Brimsby’s attention had already shifted, leaving him alone at the bar, slouching under the ratty fur-lined hood of his jacket as he clutched his drink and attempted to fold in on himself.  

His eye was aching with a dull throb, and now that Brimsby had drawn attention to it he could feel the film of his dried magic caked on his skull.  He hated it.  Hated the entire shitshow: the bleed in and fade out of timelines he couldn’t control; peering into an infinite, overlapping echo of his own life; looking out through the eyes of other versions of himself, forced to observe as they muddled through a myriad of bad life choices.  

Unconsciously his hand pressed at his ribcage through his shirt.  He could still feel it; the exhaustion and the helplessness and the betrayal and the  _ pain _ .  How much he--  _ him…  _ to be honest he was having difficulty separating what the other Sans had felt from his own experience-- had not wanted to die yet.  

It was new.  Feeling what they felt and sharing their emotions.  It had started as brief flashes he could shrug off, but the spectacle at the briefing was the first time it had interfered with him in a pronounced and noticeable way-- and in front of  _ Papyrus _ , of all people...

He tightened his hand around his drink, trying to work out a plan- a way to deal with this.  He wasn’t about to tell Papyrus the truth of it; Alphys had always wanted to study the abnormality of his eye, but Sans wasn’t certain her methods wouldn’t involve something surgical and painful, and he wasn’t  _ that  _ desperate, yet.  As much as he’d like to pretend, he couldn’t expect anything from the voice behind the door, and every dog in the Underground was useless.

That left Brimsby…

He glanced towards the bartender, who was now standing at the opposite end of the bar in quiet conversation with another monster who appeared to be made entirely out of shadows and teeth.  

Something in his non-existent gut told Sans that telling Brimsby would be a  _ very _ bad idea.

Maybe he could just gouge the fucking thing out and start wearing an eyepatch like Undyne.

They could start a trend.  

He didn’t notice the disturbance creeping along his periphery until it shoved thick tendrils into the centre of his field of vision, causing him to instinctively clutch at his eye and cry out.  There was nothing to prevent it, and he winced as his vision branched and then shattered, his eye opening onto a chaos of images, the timelines jerking erratically, a mixture of static and saturation as he cycled through a dozen other versions of himself, too quickly to get a read other than that they were all  _ feeling _ and it was overwhelming.  He was standing in the judgement hall, he was at his sentry station, he was trudging through ankle-deep snow, he was sitting at a table in a dimly lit restaurant in a fancy resort, he was tasting the acid-bile flavour of reset after reset after  _ reset _ .

It was too much, he couldn’t take it all in, he was nauseous- or maybe he’d already thrown up- and he only became aware that the tearing at the back of his throat was from him screaming when Brimsby’s hands grabbed his shoulders and shook him  _ hard. _

“What do you think you’re-” the bartender stopped as he got a good look at Sans, his left socket crammed with a cluster of eyelights that were pulsing and writhing and threatening to spill  _ out _ .  

“Brims…” Sans’ voice was a raw mess, the light in his right eye guttering out as he clawed desperately at Brimsby’s hands. “You gotta-- I can’t-” A sharp hiss turned into a howl of pain as one of his irises ruptured, the magic running from his socket and dripping out of his eye as two other lights crowded in to take its place. “ _ You gotta get ‘em out. _ ” 


	3. Chapter 3

Sans didn’t remember blacking out.  

Emerging from the haze of unconsciousness he groaned involuntarily as he twisted in on himself, rolling onto his side and clutching his bare arms to his chest.  He wasn’t in his own bed, and he wasn’t wearing his jacket-- two things that made him feel disgustingly exposed and vulnerable-- and he felt about a thousand different shades of awful; as though whatever was in him had been pulled out and run through a meat grinder before being aggressively shoved back in.  His head was killing him, and even without his tongue conjured he could taste bile in his mouth. 

Pulling an uneven breath in through his teeth he mentally tried to retrace his steps.  He’d been at the bar.  Papyrus had told him to go home and instead he’d gone to the Urn and Hound and his eye had--

Immediately his hand moved, groping at his left eye socket, feeling a flood of relief as he encountered the gentle-but-firm resistance of his magic pressing back as he probed his fingertip against the hollow space in his skull.

His eye was still there at the very least.

Small blessings.  Little victories.  

“Awake at last.”

He jolted, scrambling to sit up despite the agony in his joints and the pounding of his skull as he turned to face the voice.  Of course he wasn’t in his room, or even at home, but for whatever reason he hadn’t even considered he wasn’t  _ alone _ .  

Brimsby was sitting across the room in a chair, smiling at him out of the darkness in a way that made Sans feel profoundly uncomfortable.  His flames were the only light in the small space, and they threw wild shadows as he stood up and moved towards the bed, leaning over Sans, oblivious to the skeleton’s bristling reaction to his presence. 

“That was quite a display back at the bar.”

“Where am I?” Sans’ voice sounded painful and raw as it croaked out of his throat.  

Unperturbed, Brimsby hooked a finger under Sans’ jaw and tilted his head up, looking deep into his left eye as Sans fought the instinct to jerk away and lash out at him.

“It’s a pretty good party trick, I’ll give you that.” 

With his fingers looped under his mandible, Brimsby’s thumb prodded dangerously close to Sans’ eye socket, and the thought of the bartender’s purple flames invading his already tetchy eye magic made the skeleton shudder involuntarily. 

“Buy me dinner first, why don’t you,” he growled, raising a hand to push Brimsby’s touch away.  

In response, the bartender’s hold strengthened in a way Sans  _ did not like, _ and he continued to talk, unphased.

“Do you have any control over it, or does it just drag you along for the ride?”

Sans had had nearly enough of this, eyes narrowing as he kept his mouth closed.  

To his credit, Brimsby realized almost immediately that he was being frozen out, and, with a smooth smile, effortlessly changed tack.

“You threw up and passed out after screaming bloody murder.  I wasn’t going to leave you on my floor with your eyelights rupturing, so I brought you home to make sure you didn’t bleed out.  I figured it was a saner option than dumping your unconscious bag of bones on Papyrus and trying to explain that I wasn’t responsible.” He paused, catching Sans’ eye and speaking firmly. “You’re welcome.”

Sans hated it, but had to concede that a point was being made.  Papyrus and Brimsby were two sparks in a kerosene-laced tinderbox.  It was best they were kept separate, and as far apart from each other as possible.

“‘Preciate it,” he muttered, making a point of not looking at Brimsby as he thanked him.

Brimsby smirked, his flames crackling as his fingertips trailed along the side of Sans’ skull.  The touch felt like a reward for good behaviour, and Sans hated how easily he responded to it, the little thrill that went through him making him feel like one of Papyrus’ idiot dogs getting a pat after having gone on a good patrol.

“So…” the bartender’s voice was agonizingly smooth. “Tell me why your eye does that.”

Sans’ couldn’t help a sharp huff of cynical laughter. “Buddy,” he drawled, eyes half-lidded, leaning into the warm touch cradling the side of his head. “If I knew why it did what it does, I wouldn’t be passing out in your bar  _ because _ of it.”

It wasn’t the answer Brimsby had planned for, and his eyes narrowed almost imperceptibly in response, his claws biting into bone in a way that wasn’t  _ entirely _ unpleasant for the skeleton, but marked an obvious disapproval.

“You don’t have to be difficult, Sans.” He paused for a beat, his words calculated. “You  _ asked _ me to help you.”

“I wasn’t thinking straight,” Sans replied bluntly, meeting Brimsby’s gaze with his array of drifting eyelights. “It’s not any use to you, anyway, Brims.  You can’t have it,  _ I _ can’t control it-” 

“What does it  _ do, _ then?”

Sans hummed, a drawn out rasping growl of a sound, his eyes closing completely as he leaned a little  _ too _ enthusiastically into the flames now scraping against his jaw. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you, bright eyes.”

Suddenly Brimsby was straddling him, knees digging into the mattress on either side of Sans’ legs as he loomed over the skeleton.  He wasn’t a colossal monster, but next to Sans he seemed enormous.  Sans felt the heat radiating off him, sweat starting to bead on his forehead as his phalanges tentatively rested on Brimsby’s thighs, the bartender’s breath ghosting against his neck as he smouldered against him.

“Try me.”

This wasn’t unfamiliar territory-- both Sans and Brimsby had played this game before.  On more than one occasion Sans had found his way back to sobriety in one of the storerooms of the Urn and Hound, nursing fresh burns on the inside of his ribs and groggily pulling his clothes back on while Brimsby unfeelingly explaining they were  _ well _ passed closing and Sans had to park his sorry bones somewhere else for the night.  It was an easy, heady fuck that they both seemed to enjoy, and the more Papyrus expressly forbid it, the more Sans enthusiastically drank himself into a susceptible state and found excuses to let the bartender run his flames all the way through him.   

_ This _ was a different playing field, however.  Sober, and in a real room with real privacy, neither of them wedged against a back wall, grinding against hot flames with shoulders jammed up against an empty keg.  

Sans had to steady himself with a deep breath. 

“You can’t surprise me, Sans,” Brimsby continued in a low purr of a voice, hands moving lower, caressing ribs through the fabric of his shirt.

“Oh yeah?” 

Sans’ breath hitched as Brimsby leaned forward, flames tickling the side of his skull as he whispered in his ear.

“I know about the timelines.” 

Everything froze as the bottom fell out of Sans’ non-existent stomach, the world momentarily losing its clarity as a pang of anxiety shot right through him.  For what it was worth, Brimsby seemed pleased, running the pad of his thumb along the curve of Sans’ left eye socket, his mouth grazing the side of his skull. 

“You’re a chatty drunk, Sans.”

“What do you know?” 

The boney hands that had been resting lightly on Brimsby’s legs pushed hard as Sans sought to distance himself, the moment that had existed between them gone, replaced by something tense and sharp.  He didn’t believe Brimsby completely- he’d seen the bartender bluff too many times before- but his words hit too close to the mark to be just a wild shot in the dark, and Sans didn’t entirely trust himself to have not let  _ something _ slip when he was near the bottom of a bottle and his frustration with the uncontrollable partition of his vision had been at an all-time high. 

A fiery finger hooked into the ring of Sans’ collar, pulling him close in a way that jarred a wince from the skeleton, freezing him in place. 

“Don’t fight me, I’m on your side.” It was an instruction, not a request, and Sans hated how he cowed to it. “Tell me what it’s doing to you.  I can help.”

Sans felt himself slipping, lulled by the confidence in Brimsby’s voice combined with the strong pressure of his touch.  It would be easy--  _ so _ easy-- to just lean in and let him take the whole rotten mess off his hands.  Brimsby was smart, Brimsby had connections, Brimsby was  _ powerful _ .  If anyone could help, surely...

_ Just let him take care of it. _

“What if I don’t want your help?” Sans’ voice was huffed and quiet but still prickled with a challenge, his eyes fluttering closed as Brimsby continued to pull just enough on his collar to distract him.

There was a predatory flicker in the bartender’s smile as he leaned forward, his flames tracing the edge of the skeleton’s jaw, words heavy with absolute certainty. 

“I’m sure I can convince you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (sansby tho)


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is when it starts to get weird and in advance i'm so sorry.

“I want you to try something for me.”

Sans’ mind was sleep-fogged and barely tethered to the waking world, Brimsby’s voice seeming to come to him from across a great distance, making him slow and reluctant to respond.  He grimaced, struggling to fend off the threat of consciousness as he buried his head deeper into the bunched up pillow crammed under his skull.  

“M’done for tonight,” he mumbled, feeling, for once, sated.  Willing himself to fall asleep faster in order to escape whatever urge Brimsby had decided he wanted indulged. “Nothin’ left in the tank, Casanova.  Try again in the mornin’.”

All at once he felt fingers of flames-  _ hot _ flames. Far hotter than they needed to be- press against the bare bone of his shoulder blade.  Yelping in pain he twisted onto his side as he scrambled away from the bartender, successfully snapped to full consciousness.

“Fucking– I’m  _ done _ , I said!” His magic flared up, bristling along his extremities, and he felt a small reciprocating ripple from the eyelights in his left socket, his outburst coiling something taut among the cluster of irises.

“Don’t flatter yourself.”

Brimsby’s shirt hung open, but he’d managed to pull the rest of his clothes back on without Sans having really noticed.  He was sitting with his shoulders propped against the bed’s headboard, his attention fixed on a slender metal tube he held in his hands.

“Sit up.”

Sans wanted to make it clear that he was sitting up because  _ he _ wanted to, not because Brimsby had directed him, but he was still in pain from the over-hot touch, and distracted by whatever Brimsby was toying with, watching with wary intent as the bartender unscrewed a clear glass portion of the tube and set it aside.

“What’s-”

“Your problem is you’ve got too much.” Again, Brimsby had that obnoxious habit of stating things directly, allowing very little space for Sans to interject. “All that magic– it’s ten cups crammed into a shotglass.  It’s burning you out, making you see things you’re not supposed to see.”

Sans didn’t know what Brimsby was getting at, but without thinking he found himself touching the edge of his eye socket, finding it hard not to feel somewhat self-conscious.

“It’s all pent up in there,” Brimsby looked directly at Sans, his flames flickering. “If you don’t find some way to deal with it, it’s going to keep overflowing, and if it keeps coming out uncontrolled it’s only going to get uglier.”

“What’s your great idea then, eh?” The bartender’s words were touching too close to fears Sans had already been nursing for some time; the gnawing anxiety that said as bad as things had become, it was only the tip of the iceberg.  

“Do you know what Melt is?”

Sans shifted uneasily as he pulled his hand away from his eye, not wanting to admit to Brimsby there was  _ anything _ he didn’t know.  Hating every time he had to give him that upper hand.

“Pretend I don’t.”

“It’s something new– it’s big in the capital.  I’ve been looking to expand the market for it here.” As he spoke, Brimsby removed a vial from one of his pockets, unscrewing the lid and carefully adding a few drops of whatever it contained- something dark and viscous that reflected his flames in a strange way- to the portion of the tube he still held in his hands. “But I need to figure out the right dosage.” He capped the vial and tucked it away, screwing the separate portions of the tube back together.  In the transparent chamber Sans could just make out the substance moving in a way that vaguely seemed to defy gravity.

“So it’s some sort sorta-”

“It’s a mild hallucinogen,” Brimsby stated simply, not giving Sans a chance to get smart. “It takes the edge off and numbs things out, physically and mentally.  I think it could help calm down that overactive eye magic of yours.”

Sans wasn’t a stranger to Brimsby’s side-ventures.  He had benefited from being part of the bartender’s test market many times in the past, but something about  _ this _ offer stuck out to him, and he found himself folding his arms across his chest, loosely hooking his phalanges between his exposed ribs.

“What’s the catch?”

Brimsby’s flames crackled, a thin smile splitting his face.

“No catch, Sans.  You’re doing me a favour by testing something new, I’m doing  _ you _ a favour by letting you in on the ground floor of something I think you’re going to like, and maybe we’re going to find a way to keep your skull from cracking wide open and stop all those eyelights of yours from scurrying out.”

Sans didn’t mind the sound of that– he’d certainly said yes to worse agreements before– but he still found a part of himself pulling reluctantly against the proposal.

“Is it addictive?”

Brimsby shrugged evasively. “Depends how much of it you take.  We’re not going to start you on much.”

Sans could feel the window of opportunity closing.  Brimsby’s offers were never on the table for long, and the more questions Sans asked the faster the invitation slipped away.

“It’ll really help with my eye?”

Again, Brimsby half shrugged a shoulder, idly turning the tube over in his hands. “It’s just a theory.  We won’t know until we try it.”

Sans’ mind was racing as he laid out the pros and cons, all too aware that it was the apparent altruism of the gesture that was making him so uncertain.

“… How much?”

There was a ghost of a moment- a split second where a wicked smile split Brimsby’s face, his flames crackling before he quickly brought himself back under control, the edge of his fangs still visible in the rake of his grin.

“You’re going to have to try it first before we cross that bridge,” he explained, leaning towards Sans with obvious intent.

“Ey, I’m serious, Brimsby.” Sans moved back automatically, ducking the gesture.  “If it works– if it  _ helps _ – I gotta know-”

“Relax, Sans,” Brimsby was calm but insistent, planting a hand on the mattress to support himself as he continued to lean towards the skeleton. “We’ll work something out.”

Sans allowed himself to relent slightly, the bartender closing the gap between them, Brimsby’s flames working against the vertebrae of his neck, pulling a fuzzy veil over the remainder of his concerns.

“ _ One _ try,” he said, attempting to sound firm as Brimsby eased an arm around him, pulling him close in a rough, possessive gesture. “After that-”

“Don’t worry about it,” Brimsby was flush against him now, coaxing small, involuntary noises from the skeleton as Sans felt himself easing past the point of no return. “We’ll start a tab.”


	5. Chapter 5

“Just relax.”

Large, flaming hands were gently running along Sans’ ribs, caressing him in a way that felt borderline condescending-- like he was some small animal that needed placating.  Sans barely managed to contain the irritated response that surged up into the back of his throat, wanting to tell Brimsby that this  _ was _ him relaxed, he’d never been more relaxed in his fucking  _ life _ .  

Instead, he forced a brittle-sharp smile as he leaned against the warm flames of the bartender’s chest, his hands curling into small, defiant fists at his side.

“You’re not the boss of me.”

Brimsby’s flames crackled in something approaching a snicker as he raised one of his fiery suggestions of an eyebrow.

“That’s the point, isn’t it?”

The reply caught Sans off guard, and he laughed, the sound sharp and loud and sudden.

“Ain’t that the god damn truth.”

Brimby smirked, pulling his hands out from under Sans’ jacket as he nudged the skeleton into sitting up on his own.  Sans had insisted on pulling his sweat-stained and brimstone-reeking clothes back on before they started, something Brimsby had elected not to comment on, but definitely gave the impression he thought was unnecessary.  

“You don’t have to do anything special, just inhale in and breathe it out,” he explained in a way that Sans resented almost immediately.  It wasn’t like he hadn’t smoked before, and he hated having anything spelled out to him, his fingertips twitching as he grit his teeth against Brimsby’s instructions. “It will take a few minutes to set in, but you’ll know it when it starts.”

“I know how to smoke,” Sans said, holding out his hand expectantly. 

Brimsby’s expression remained schooled, but there was a flicker in his sparks that indicated a flash of barely contained annoyance. 

“Once it starts it’s best to just relax and let it move through you.  It’ll run its course in a few hours, and I’ll keep an eye on you.”

“Fuck,” Sans sneered, taking the slender metal contraption, with its clear-glass cartridge of melt, from Brimsby’s hand. “I don’t need the tutorial, bright eyes.  I get it.  Not my first rodeo.” 

Without waiting for any further instructions he closed his jagged teeth around the end of the tube, depressing a button built into the cartridge the way Brimsby had shown him and waiting a moment for the melt to atomize before he pulled a deep breath into his chest.  It was difficult to hold smoke inside a skeleton body, and even with the pull of his magic working to contain it smoke still trickled out of the gaps between his ribs, eventually leaving him in a steady stream as he exhaled.  There was no strong reaction to start, and Sans sighed, slouching heavily against Brimsby, who seemed once again content to have the skeleton’s weight rest against him.  

He waved a hand as Sans offered him the melt.

“It’s best if I don’t for your first time.  In case you have a reaction.”

Something about the phrasing of his answer prickled at the back of Sans’ mind.

“Reaction?”

Brimsby’s hands were on him again, resuming their idle, condescending petting.

“Some monsters don’t feel melt the way it’s intended.  A bad run isn’t pleasant-- you wouldn’t want to ride it out alone.”

There was a feeling growing on Sans’ tongue-- a numbness that was starting to spread, fogging the tips of his fingers and toes in a way he could only feel by the  _ absence _ of how it felt. 

“You saying this might go badly for me?” the spike of anger he felt seemed to dilute somewhere between his brain and his mouth, and instead of fighting he felt the words slur out of him . “What about my fucking  _ eye,  _ genius? What if this-”

“The important thing is: if you react badly to it, at least we’ll know.” Brimsby was persuasive, easing the melt back towards Sans’ jagged teeth. “You’re in it now, might as well commit.”

The second hit wasn’t quite as pleasant and Sans coughed, grimacing as something twisted in the back of his throat, a reciprocating sensation surging up in his left eye.  The numbness in his mouth and on his fingers was steadily spreading, now, and it felt like the vision in his right eye was beginning to fade, fuzzing out like a bad television signal.  He tried to steady himself, but the straight lines that intersected to create the corners of the room were... sagging, the dark shape of the shadows cast by Brimsby’s flames running down like hot wax.  Quietly-- further away than his voice had any right to be-- Sans heard Brimsby talking, his words sounding soothing in a way he couldn’t quite place.  There was something that was making it hard to focus; an echo bleeding into place as the darkness of the room ran out, things all at once completely alien and achingly familiar, saturation seeping along the edge of his vision followed by the crisp bite of subterranean cold, and the high, affable pitch of something that sounded so much like laughter----

_ “Careful, Sans!”  _

His eyelights drifted lazily and he winked, offering a relaxed smile to the other skeleton who he was suddenly standing beside.  Papyrus stood with his hands on his hips as he surveyed the scene spread across the tramped-down snow on the steps outside their home-- except... none of the upstairs windows were boarded up, none of the jagged traps protecting the front steps were in place, none of the hand-painted ‘KEEP OUT’ signs were plastered to the front door… It wasn’t  _ their _ home, but the shape, the layout… it was  _ exactly _ like the house he and Papyrus shared.  

They were standing outside, and Sans knew… but he didn’t know  _ how _ he knew, that they were there because of a box they’d pulled from the garbage dump.  It had been labelled X-MAS, and they’d brought it back to Snowdin, carrying it easily it between them despite their height difference, opening it to reveal a mess of christmas lights inside.  

Papyrus-- not his Papyrus:  _ Boss _ Papyrus, but still  _ his _ Papyrus, the only Papyrus he-  _ this _ Sans knew-- had eagerly dumped the contents onto their living room floor, and together they’d spent the next several hours untangling them.  Now the strings were laid out in orderly loops on the front steps, and they were trying to figure out how to attach them to the eaves. 

“I can’t make the ladder sit level on the snow,” Papyrus lamented, almost comical in how unlike Papyrus--  _ Boss _ Papyrus-- he sounded. “Even with one of us holding it from the bottom, it’s too dangerous.”

“Maybe Lesser Dog will give us a hand,” Sans heard himself suggest, tilting his head back to look up-- way up-- at the eaves overhead. “That big long neck of his-”

“But his paws won’t reach,” Papyrus said, sighing with effect, crossing his arms as he stared up at the snow-covered roof.  

Sans grinned, shrugging as he wedged his hands into his jacket pockets. “Maybe we can just leave the lights on the ground.  They look pretty cozy there.”

Papyrus made an unconvinced noise, tapping his foot as he looked down at the lights they had spent so long untangling. 

“Wait! I know!” If  his outburst startled Sans he didn’t show it, allowing the taller skeleton to reach down and grab him under his arms, hoisting him up with practically no effort and ducking his head to sit him on his shoulders. 

“Nyeheh!” Papyrus crowed, holding tight to Sans’ slippered ankles. “Alright up there?” 

It took a moment before Sans’ smile returned, surveying things from his new vantage point.  His Papyrus-- Boss Papyrus-- would never do this, but for Sans--  _ this _ Sans-- this was nothing out of the ordinary.  “All good up here, bro,” he assured with slightly more confidence than he felt, tightening his fingers into Papyrus’ scarf juuuust to be safe as his brother knelt down and gathered up the loops of Christmas lights, handing a string up to Sans.   


“You can boost yourself up onto the lower roof and hang them around the window,” Papyrus suggested. “If there’s any left, we can wrap them around the door posts!”

Working together, with patience and diligence (and a bit of blue magic) they set to work, Papyrus standing back and directing from the ground while Sans clambered carefully over the snowy roof and hooked strings of lights to the gutters.   A couple Snowdin residents paused to observe the skeleton brothers at work, and Sans enjoyed the way Papyrus hammed it up for a crowd, his direction becoming more theatrical and over-stated as Sans played the part of his lazy straight-man.  

Despite a few near-accidents they finished without incident, and with the lights hung in place Sans sat on the edge of the roof, his hands jammed in his pockets as he grinned down at his brother.

“This was a good plan, bro.”

Papyrus grinned, flourishing his hand against his chest as he adopted a confident pose. “Only the  _ best _ plans for the Great Papyrus.”

“You know how we’re gonna get me down?”

Papyrus’ pose faltered, glancing uncertainly at Sans as he dangled his slippered feet over the roof’s edge.

“Um.”

Something around the edge of his vision began to slide, the view Sans was enjoying from his roof-top perch starting to lose its clarity.  Sans tensed inside his eye sockets, wanting to bring his hands up to cradle the side of his head as a low static him formed in the back of his skull, but his body kept sitting in a relaxed slouch, laughing at something Papyrus said as the taller skeleton spread his arms wide, as if inviting Sans to jump down into them.  The scene was fading out, and Sans could feel the pulse of his eye-magic as he struggled to keep everything in focus, that familiar slick ache of his irises splitting and reforming as they crowded up the space inside his socket.  He couldn’t move, couldn’t claw it back, couldn’t---

“You need to wake up.”

\---he couldn’t feel anything.  

Brimsby’s voice was no comfort, the fire monster shaking him hard as Sans blearily opened his eyes, finding himself in the same small room he’d been in before, curled up in a boney knot on the bed.

“Mm...nuh?”

“I said get up.”

The few sensations that  _ were _ seeping back into his bones felt warm and pleasant.  Brimsby seemed tense, but  _ Sans _ felt incredibly calm, and for the first time in as long as he could remember his eye wasn’t in pain.

“Brims…?” He tried to make his mouth work, but his jaw still felt loose and heavy. 

Brimsby was crouched over him, and as Sans fumbled his way back to consciousness he stood up, pulling the skeleton with him, looking impatient as the smaller monster leaned heavily against him.

“How long was-”

“Awhile,” Brimsby responded brusquely, adjusting the hood of Sans’ jacket as he tried to get him to stand on his own.  Sans remained dazed, however, leaning against him heavily as he struggled to focus his eyelights, still seeing a ghostly shadow of the timeline he’d been immersed in, like afterimages burned onto his sight. 

“We were… was in Snowdin.  Hangin’ lights… I knew everything about ‘im.  In ‘is… I could  _ feel _ it...”

A flash of interest showed on Brimsby’s face, but he tramped it down quickly, giving Sans a sharp push to get him to stand on his own.

“Your brother is looking for you,” he said, his tone firm in a way that brought Sans back to sobriety faster than any rough shakes or gestures had managed thus-far. “You need to go.”


	6. Chapter 6

As far as Sans could tell, Papyrus wasn’t at home.

“Boss?”

His voice sounded too loud as he stood inside the front door of the house he shared with his brother, stepping on the heels of his sneakers one a time as he pulled his feet out of them.  As anxious as he knew he should have felt, things were still pleasantly numbed by the melt- both mentally and physically- and it was profoundly difficult to feel  _ too _ concerned about his current situation.  His walk home had been oddly pleasant; he hadn’t felt the snow sliding into his shoes as he’d trudged through the fresh snow drifts, and his shoulder hadn’t hurt at all when he’d caught it against one of the unused spike traps Papyrus had left propped up beside their front door.  

“Boss, you home?”

Home was the safest place for Sans to be, honestly.  From what Brimsby had relayed as he’d all but shoved Sans out his door, if Papyrus was out looking for him, then Sans going home quickly and quietly, and doing his best to act like he’d been there the entire time, was the best course of action.  

He hesitated as he took the stairs leading up to their separate rooms, struggling to focus through the melt-induced fog.  He’d have to change.  A shower would be too suspicious, but at least swapping his clothes might do something about the overwhelming reek of brimstone wafting off him-- the smell was Brimsby’s calling card, and a dead giveaway.  

He didn’t have time for distractions, objectively he knew this, but something about the melt still easing through him, the way things appeared to be semi-liquid and runny, and the numbness taking the edge off his senses…

Instead of turning right towards his room, he leaned left, nudging open the bathroom door and bracing his hands against the countertop as he pushed forward and inspected his eye in the mirror.

His left socket was ringed in red and… oozing, large drips of red magic running like bloody tears down the side of his face.  However, the eye itself: the three, fat red irises, were clustered so close together that at a glance they almost looked… normal.

Sans touched a blunt claw against the edge of his eye socket, scratching some of the dried magic off his face.  He was so engrossed, captivated by how  _ calm _ his eye looked and felt, that he didn’t hear the front door open and close, or the stomp of heavy feet marching up the stairs, until--

“ _ Where have you been _ ?”

A shudder of anxiety- an automatic, instinctive response, crawled up San’s spine at the sound of his younger brother’s voice.  He leaned back away from the mirror, a numb, lazy grin drawing across his face as he turned to look at Papyrus, whose shoulders nearly filled the entire frame of the doorway, his expression sharp and stern.

“Heya Boss.”    

“Sans-”

“Check it out: got the ol’ left peeper lookin’ pretty.”

“Sans-”

“No more misbehavin’, eh? Nothin’  _ left _ to worry about.”

“ _ Sans _ !”

Sans hadn’t realized he was rambling until Papyrus’ outburst cut him off, his brother surging forward, grabbing a fistful of his shirt and jerking him roughly away from the mirror.

“Where  _ were _ you?”

Sans squirmed for a moment before he surrendered to the hold Papyrus had on him and went slack, leaning lazily against Papyrus’ grip.

“What’re you talkin’ about? I was here, Boss.  You told me to go home and I-”

“I told you to go home  _ two days ago _ , Sans.”

Something sparked in the back of Sans’ mind, a slow, nauseous tilting as a part of the world fell out from under his feet.

“What? No way, Paps.  I was-”

“ _ Don’t _ -” Papyrus’ voice was razor sharp, his grip twisting tighter into Sans’ shirt- “lie to me.”

Sans felt the small bones in his hands shaking, laughing nervously as he loosely tugged at Papyrus’ gloved hand. “Boss, I  _ swear _ -”

“Were you with him?”

It didn’t take a genius to know the ‘him’ Papyrus implied, but Sans still managed to blink owlishly in a forced parody of confusion.

“Who? Doggo?”

Papyrus growled, and Sans produced a strained smile, waving a hand dismissively.

“Paps, you told me to go home, so I came home.  You can ask anyone, I ain’t been hanging around with nobody.”

Something flashed in Papyrus’ sockets, a brief hint of… Sans struggled to place it.  He looked-- but it couldn’t be, because Papyrus would  _ never _ \-- hurt, as though something about San’s insistence upset him on a level apart from how frustrated he was by his flagrant disobeying of his rules.  The expression passed in an instant, and as if to compensate for it he shoved Sans back roughly, so that the smaller skeleton only just managed to catch himself against the bathroom counter.

“You’re a terrible liar, Sans.” Papyrus loomed over him, and even numbed by the melt Sans felt a small knot of genuine fear bubble up inside his chest. “You were with him.  You  _ reek _ of him.  How many times do I have to say it, Sans? What have I  _ told _ you?”

“Fuck, Papyrus, would you give it a rest?!” Sans’ anger manifested sharp and unexpected, fed up with his brother’s intimidation tactics, and still gnawing on the yet-to-be-proven revelation that he’d somehow lost two entire days. “I’m an embarrassing disappointment when I’m around, you lose your mind and can’t shove me back under your heel fast enough when I disappear.  I dunno where you  _ invented _ two whole days but I’m tellin’ ya: _ I’ve been here _ .”

They faced off, tense and silent, Sans breathing hard and Papyrus standing stock still, hands curled into large, angry fists at his side.  The moment stretched, growing into something awkward and ugly the longer each brother refused to be the one to blink first.

“Do you know why I keep you on such a short leash, Sans?” Papyrus asked at last, the sting of his own tense, rigid magic permeating the air, just  _ daring _ Sans to try something. “It’s not because you’re an embarrassment, and it’s not because you’re a disappointment.   _ It’s because you’re a liability _ .”

Something about his statement struck Sans like a blow, and the hollow, empty pits his eyes had become dissipated as his eyelights flickered back to life.

“... What?”

“You can’t keep  _ anything _ shut when you’re around him, Sans, and that’s exactly the way he wants you to be. You’d dislocate every bone in your body twisting yourself around his finger, and the worst part is you don’t even see that he’s making you do it.  You’re a tool to him, and he.  _ doesn’t. care. about. you. _ ”

There was nothing about this Sans wanted to hear, and he dismissed it all by scoffing, loudly. “I’m not having this conversation with you.”

Hunching his shoulders he moved towards the bathroom door, giving Papyrus a rough shove as he walked past him.  To his credit, Papyrus didn’t retaliate physically, but he couldn’t hold back a final remark.

“I tell you to stay away from him because I’m trying to protect us-- I’m trying to protect  _ you _ .”

The cynicism that suddenly overwhelmed Sans nearly choked him, and he managed a dry half-laugh as he continued towards his room.

“Don’t do me any fuckin’ favours, Boss.”

His bedroom door opened and slammed before Papyrus could respond, the sound of a deadbolt sliding into place settling the end of their confrontation.  Papyrus stood for a minute longer in the empty bathroom, his shoulders momentarily slipping out of the tense hold he kept them, and he sighed.

-

Sans’ room was pitch black, but he didn’t need light to find his way to the grimy mattress shoved into the corner against the furthest wall.  Wrestling out of his jacket he threw it angrily into the dark before he dropped his shoulder- followed by the rest of his body- onto his bed, curling onto his side as he pressed the heels of his palms against his skull.  

He hated this.  Hated when Papyrus acted this way- like anything he did for him came from a place of care or concern, and wasn’t simply the product of a miserable, family-based obligation that both of them resented, if they were being at all honest with each other.  His relationship with Brimsby wasn’t like that.  They didn’t care about each other and that was the _point_ , Papyrus  _ knew _ that.  Sans wasn’t involved in the weird power struggle going on between his brother and the bartender, and he didn’t know why it mattered so fucking much to either of them  _ who _ he spent time with, anyway.  If only everyone would just leave him the fuck  _ alone _ .  

Seething, he tried desperately to push Papyrus’ words out of his head, grasping at the last few tendrils of melt running through him, trying to tap into something,  _ anything _ like he’d seen before; hanging Christmas lights in the Snowdin scene a hundred timelines away.  

Something wavered, a rippling in the back of his skull that slowly undulated forward, the stale darkness of his room peeling back in fat strips so that suddenly he was looking out at---

\---warm lights, but not like Christmas lights on the snow.  He was inside.  There were several other monsters around, sitting at tables and booths and on high bar stools.  He knew all of them- better than they knew him.  They were laughing and talking casually, and he was tired, but it was comfortable, and he was enjoying himself---

The scene was hard to pull into focus, and Sans grit his teeth, trying for the first time ever not to push it away, but to draw it back, to immerse himself deeper into it, to control it.

\---He had his arms crossed on the bar and he was feeling okay.  He was full and content, and Grillby had been standing near him for the better part of the evening, cleaning glasses and tidying behind the bar while talking to him quietly.  He didn’t want to think too much about it, he didn’t want to analyze what it meant that the fire monster kept drifting back into his radius, no matter how many times a customer called him away.  He didn’t want to think about the occasional touch of his flames against his hand, or the gentle, genuine laughter at his jokes.  Thinking about it made him feel juvenile and needy, like he had some sort of out-of-control crush, which… No.  He wasn’t going to think about it.  

The scene was stuttering and slipping back out of focus, and despite his best efforts Sans couldn’t hold onto it, letting it slide out of his socket as he turned to lay on his back and stare up at the dark ceiling.  The familiar ache in his eye had returned, whatever remaining numbness that had been afforded by the melt having run its course.  He could feel the agitation of his eyelights in his left socket, and he grit his teeth against the pain, knowing the best option at this point was to close his eyes and attempt to sleep it off.  

He’d say to hell with them both, if he could.  Tell them to fuck themselves.  To have fun tearing each other apart over their pointless, petty rivalry.  Let them destroy the entire Underground and everyone along with it, just so long as they left him out of it.

But the truth of it, deep down, was that he wasn’t sure how long or how well he could live without either of them.  And he hated  _ that _ more than he hated Papyrus, and more than he hated Brimsby.

He’d sleep now, he decided, cramming his hand against his left eye in attempt to do something about the throbbing pain blossoming there.  And he’d wake up early and go to his sentry post tomorrow, and he’d keep to himself, and he’d do a good fucking job to spite Papyrus. 

And afterwards, as soon as the focus of his brother’s perpetual irritability had moved to some other target…

He was going to find out how much a steady dose of Melt cost. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> okay! that was a wild and completely wholesome ride. xox love - wormy


End file.
